Saturday, May 21, 2016

The strrrrrrrrretching timeline of the Marvel Universe means that pretty much all the events of the MU have taken place in the last, say, 12-15 years. My usual criteria for determining how many years they've been adventuring are the relative ages of Franklin Richards, who was "born" in 1968, and Kitty Pryde, who was 13½ in 1980 and turned 14 in space in Uncanny X-Men #165. And yet Franklin's still at least under 10, and Kitty's old enough (21) to bartend in Mekanix #1 (2002). Which only goes to prove: don't try to apply real-world aging logic to the Marvel Universe.

The real problem happens when stories try to tie events in the Marvel Universe to real-life events or persons. If Captain America got frozen in 1945, then the Avengers unfroze him in Avengers #4 in 1963. That means he's barely eighteen years a man out of time. But if we guesstimate that in today's Marvel Universe, Capsicle got thawed circa 2000 at the earliest  well, he missed a whole a lot more, including the presidency of Ronald Reagan, who, according to canon, got turned into a snake under his watch (Cap #344, 1988). That means that Ben Grimm and Reed Richards, who began their careers described as WWII veterans...ain't. Not anymore.

Which explains how, in 1973, you could actually believe that J. Jonah Jameson had been around the Daily Bugle since the war years, right?